No artworld topics this month. But here’s an article I published five years ago in The Country and Abroad magazine. It’s relevant to a time of year that is always dark, but this year seems darker than usual. Photo courtesy Wikipedia Commons On December 21, a few years back, I attended a Winter Solstice celebration. The leaders of the celebration were a bespectacled, self-identified Native American, who looked and dressed like everyone else except for the birch-bark headdress he was wearing and the drum he carried, and an English woman wearing a bird costume. They were well-meaning sorts, but I soon left the ceremony and came home feeling disappointed. That evening I pondered the winter solstice and what it means to us today. There’s no denying that the shortest day of the year can arouse something deep within us. For thousands of years, our ancestors gathered to perform celebrations designed to acknowledge the darkness and pray for the light’s return. Basically, we’re all a bunch of primates terrified that the sun is going to disappear forever. But there is also a deep urge to feel our old selves die with the old year and be reborn in the lengthening days to come. It is a fact that we cannot enter into the mindset of our prehistoric ancestors. You can pick up a bow and arrow and run through the woods wearing nothing but a loincloth and moccasins, but you’re not the same as the Native American for whom it was a matter of life or death whether he killed that deer. In the same way, as I stood with...
I received a lot of comments from museum directors and curators on last month’s blog, agreeing with me that changing social mores have caused a re-evaluation of what gets presented in museums today. The art market follows this trend: paintings depicting Native Americans as ignorant, bloodthirsty savages are much harder to sell than they were 30 years ago, and their fair market value has consequently decreased. On the other hand, paintings that depict Native Americans in a sympathetic light have risen in fair market value. A telling example can be found in a sale at an auction in Nevada last month. Western art, in addition to being offered at the New York auction houses, has its own specialty auction houses, and the Coeur d’Alene Art Auction (which, though it bears the name of its original venue, has been held in Reno for years) is one of the 800-pound gorillas of the Western art market. Its annual summer sale is attended by all of the major Western collectors and dealers, and record prices for Western artists’ works have often been achieved there. Howard Terpning (born 1927) has long been the dean of living Western artists, with several works previously bringing seven figures at auction. The painting below was sold for $2,360,000 last month, a record for the artist. Howard Terpning (born 1927). Paper That Talks Two Ways – The Treaty Signing, 2008Photo courtesy Coeur d’Alene Art Auction I think that Terpning’s choice of subject was the major factor contributing to the record price. Just as politicians in Congress do today, a Native American tribe is discussing a proposed treaty that...
